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metaphor and articulation

I’m thinking about how to maximize expression within the constraints of a blog, specifically a blog that is hosted on the WordPress server.

exploring methods

captured with digital camera

captured with scanner

The scanner is definitely a little less trouble. The only reason to use the camera is to take an actual photograph, unless the drawing is too big to fit on the scanner bed.

setting up anew

oppositional tactics

Works exploring hybrid arts practice – combining studio activities with digital technologies:

Animation Projects

Activating Verbs – jump, fall, flip
the social life of pears in four scenes

Self Portrait
self portrait 2005

Web Environments

Visual Literacy /Reading Online
Teaching Portfolio
Conceptual frameworks for thinking about digital technologies in education
boys / garden / legacy / will – collaborative project with patti fraser
visual literacy / visual language
readers’ response w/ patti fraser
mothers’ day
winter 2005
Veda Hille photogallery
ma thesis

Sturken, M. & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Oxford Press.

Chapter 2

Sturken, M. & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Oxford Press.

Chapter 1

Sturken, M. & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Oxford Press.

Introduction

Bakhtin’s Contribution

Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Chapters 3, 4, and 6. Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action (pp. 46-92, 119-147). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 3

Wertsch says Vygotsky did not spell out specific historical, cutlural and institutional settings and how they are tied to mediated action. This is the aspect of research that I am most interested in. It is this relationship between settings and actions, and a sense of agency, that I hope to understand in articulating a theory for mentoring as a distributed network of social learning. Specifically, I am interested in the conditions that enable,enhance and enrich learning mediated through digital technologies. How do we create sustainable, developmental, learning environments? What are the ecological factors that contribute to dynamic, productive exchanges of experiences, theories, and plans for action?

Vygotsky (1978) wrote about adult/child relationships, his research focused on interindividual relationships (Wertsch, 1991) but did not extend to the broader historical, cultural or institutional aspects within which those relationships would be occurring. Wertsch suggests Vygotsky was moving toward considering how mental functioning of the individual was linked to broader contexts, before his life was cut short by tuberculosis.

Minick (1985), cited in Wertsch (1991), argued that it was crucial to understand the actions of an individual, a dyad or a small group as a component of a social system. Minick said intermental actions and the social interaction that makes this possible are defined and structured by the broader social and cultural system. As I stand by and observe the effect of teacher education program policies and practices on teacher candidate resistance, opposition and acceptance of digital technology in elementary education teaching practice, this perspective makes perfect sense. When the research included my intervention as a mentor with the teacher educator – to suggest and support uses of digital technologies in their teaching practice – there was a commensurate engagement with the teacher candidates and their faculty advisors. When the research required me to simply observe, with no mentoring intervention with the teacher educators, it seems significant that subsequently, the teacher candidates do not see the value or importance of learning to use digital technologies in their teaching practice. This does not begin to touch on the issues of discussion, of being able to engage in critical, productive debates about the uses and the role of digital technology in education.

Wertsch (1991) describes Vygotsky’s shift from viewing the individual child’s development primarily in terms of individual psychology to teacher-child intermental functioning in institutionally situated activity. This reminds me of another shift, described by Britzman (1991) in Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. Britzman describes three myths of teaching that maintain an isolated, individuistic perspective in teachers: “everything depends on the teacher”; “the teacher as expert”; and “teachers are self made”. If teachers are going to have an attitude and approach that would allow them to participate in a mentoring relationship that is not based on an expert/novice construction, they are also going to have to shift their persepctive on learning from individuated, isolated dyadic relationships to a networked, interactive, dialogic relationship. This shift in perspective would need to be informed by both the individual participant, and also the institutional cultural context within which it takes place.

Lee, B. (1985). Intellectual origins of Vygotsky’s semiotic analysis. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 66-93). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.